Saturday, March 15, 2008

The fulcrums of Obama's campaign have been his character as supposedly transcending race - indeed, he implies that his very identity will somehow end identity politcs in America - and equally his claims to superior judgment. Yet all are clearly called into question by the company he has chosen to keep. The blogosphere has been pointing for months to Obama's twenty year relationship with the racist and vitriolic Rev. Jerimiah Wright and Obama's membership in Wright's afrocentric Trinity United Church. Now it is finally making its way into the cable news, though not yet into the MSM.

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Here is the Hannity and Colmes video documenting a few of the incredibly inflamatory, anti-American, anti-semetic and racist remarks of Obama's friend and pastor of twenty years, Rev. Jerimiah Wright.

And here is a Sean Hannity interview of Rev. Wright:

Obama has previously attempted to squelch talk about Rev. Wright and their association by claiming that Wright was simply an "uncle figure" and that Obama "didn't agree" with all of the things Wright may have said. Despite Obama's disingenuous characterization of Trinity United - "I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial" - the cat is out of the bag now, and Obama is into damage control.

As reported in the Kaus Files, Obama tried to put a damper on this issue with a preemptive, global denial in the Huffington Post yesterday:

. . . I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. . . .

Read the article. And he appeared on Fox News last night to briefly answer questions about the scandal:

As shown in the video, Obama's defence is that, while he often attended church, Rev. Wright did not make these vitriolic and racist types of statements while he was in attendance. Obama states that he did know about one or two statements that Wright had made when he named Wright to the committee but did not feel them that important. Obama claims that had he heard these repeated he would have quit the Church.

Watching the video, one is struck with the fact that Bill Clinton may finally have met his match in the ability to lie convincingly. But as Rick Moran lays out the facts, he notes that Obama's contrary assertions are "frankly unbelievable." Indeed, Obama seems to have has his own DNA stained dress problems. In Obama's case, it is a paper trail that belies his assertions in the Fox interview. It is Obama's memoirs and, indeed, the origins of his "audacity of hope" theme. As Rich Lowrey posts at NRO:

. . . In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we're getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama's second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill . . .

Read the entire post. Indeed, it would seem that when Obama first heard Rev. Wright's racist screed, he didn't recoil, rather he signed on the dotted line. And we clearly see the Reverend's mindset in the words of Obama's wife. It was only a few weeks ago that she told the world that, for the "first time," she was "proud of America."

Update 2: Juan Williams just appeared on the Beltway Boys and raised an interesting point. The Jerimiah Wright issue has still not gotten a lot of traction in the MSM, but he doesn't think that simply ignoring it is doing Obama any favors. To paraphrase, he states that, while the MSM may be ignoring this, a lot of white people aren't.

As Bookworm Room argues in one of her usual thoughtful posts, yes, Obama's association with Rev. Wright does matter. I certainly believe so on several accounts. One, Obama's attempt to minimize his twenty year association with Rev. Wright and the screed he has preached show a distinct lack of veracity. Two, I personally do not tolerate racism, and with two children of mixed race, I firmly believe that racism of any sort has no place in our politics. I would not tolerate the racism of a David Duke, I would not tolerate a supporter of Duke and the racist attitudes that implies, nor will I tolerate the racism of Rev. Wright. The fact that Obama has tolerated it for twenty years speaks volumes about this man's character.

As Thomas Sowell recently wrote:

Character is what we have to depend on when we entrust power over ourselves, our children and our society to government officials.

We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou.

Currently, various facts are belatedly beginning to leak out that give us clues to the character of Barack Obama. But to report these facts is being characterized as a "personal" attack.

Barack Obama's personal and financial association with a man under criminal indictment in Illinois is not just a "personal" matter. Nor is his 20 years of going to a church whose pastor has praised Louis Farrakhan and condemned the United States in both sweeping terms and with obscene language.

The Obama camp likens mentioning such things to criticizing him because of what members of his family might have said or done. But it was said, long ago, that you can pick your friends but not your relatives.

Obama chose to be part of that church for 20 years. He was not born into it. His "personal" character matters, just as Eliot Spitzer's "personal" character matters — and just as Hillary Clinton's character would matter if she had any.

How many lies must Obama tell before he falls off his perch as an “Agent of Change” and comes back down to earth and is recognized as a gifted but flawed politician, no better and no worse than McCain or Hillary Clinton for that matter?

I think it is now beginning to happen. According to Rasmussen, Obama dropped seven points in the polls overnight, making him almost even with Hillary in the Democratic primaries and several points behind McCain in the national polls. It's about time.

Update: Tom MacGuire at Just One Minute has an exceptional post on all of this:

. . . [N]ot even the Times will be able to ignore this now, ancient footage and interviews with Wright will surface, and Obama will be pretending that he never heard any of it. Get Claude Rains to close the church!.

This Rolling Stone article from Feb 2007 titled "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama" looks like a gold mine. Lots of material on Wright . . . This next passage gives a flavor of what Obama is pretending he did not hear in church . . . :

Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."

Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."

It was a 1988 sermon called “The Audacity to Hope” that turned Mr. Obama, in his late 20s, from spiritual outsider to enthusiastic churchgoer. Mr. Wright in the sermon jumped from 19th-century art to his own youthful brushes with crime and Islam to illustrate faith’s power to inspire underdogs. Mr. Obama was seeing the same thing in public housing projects where poor residents sustained themselves through sheer belief.

. . . In “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama described his teary-eyed reaction to the minister’s words. “Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones,” Mr. Obama wrote. “Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story.”

Mr. Obama was baptized that year, and joining Trinity helped him “embrace the African-American community in a way that was whole and profound,” said Ms. Soetoro, his half sister.

Whoa. It is hardly as if this is the church Obama's parents selected and he inherited. He sought out Wright, was moved by Wright, and is now pretending he had no idea Wright said these things. . . .

Updated 3: Much of the above information is now appearing in the Washington Post - but only on Mary Ann Akers The Sleuth blog. Its not quite made the main pages yet. Regardless, the comments of one individual who identifies herself as an Obama supporter are noteworthy:

An interesting summary from an Obama supporter. Here's the link if you wanna sound-off. Very interesting:http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/obamas-judgment-wright-or-wron.phpBy now everyone has seen some of the exceedingly provocative clips fromMr. Wright's (Obama's pastor) sermons. As an Obama supporter I amassailed by the following questions/confusions regarding the fallout ofthis episode. I have tried my hardest (believe me it's been excruciatingly hard)to objectively confront the implications of our candidate'srelationship with his pastor. I persuaded myself to face thesequestions by telling myself that one is nothing if one is notintellectually honest:

1. There is an undeniable close knit 20 year relationship between thepastor and Obama. I gather, the Pastor married Barrack and Michelle,baptized his children, dedicated Obama's house, has been his "soundingboard" for all that time. The title of Obama's book "Audacity of Hope"is from the Pastor's sermon. From WSJ I gather, the Pastor was one ofthe first people Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in2004. That, Obama consulted him before deciding to run for presidentand prayed privately with him before announcing his candidacy lastyear. How can one distance oneself from this deep and this long arelationship? That would be akin to trying to distance yourself fromhalf your life. Won't it?

2. The Pastor called US the number one killer, held US responsible forAIDS/9-11/Mandela's imprisonment and apartheid/Palestinianplight/killing of innocents to bring down Castro & Libya - I mean,it goes on and on over, not one or two, but several sermons. How do youexplain how you presumably sat through such incendiary sermons withyour family? Or, at a minimum, continued having a spiritualrelationship despite such rhetoric?

3. Then I read that these clips directly contradict some of the thingsObama has been saying about the pastor. It seems Obama said clearlythat he does not regard his church to be "controversial". Whileaddressing the Jewish Leaders he apparently explained his pastor'santi-Zionist statements as being rooted in Israel's support for SouthAfrica when it seems those statements were never qualified as that. Idon't know if anyone has more insights on this.

4. Our candidate's primary counterpoint to Hillary's Experience has been his Judgment. If people question his judgment for keeping close kinship with someone who was asking God to damn America, how will he respond? What will he say?

5. Obama's candidacy is significantly based on his crossover appeal.That is, his appeal to Republicans and Independents. He may yet get thenomination but is his appeal not fatally compromised? How can he holdon to the mantle of being the less divisive candidate while having anunapologetic 20 year spiritual relationship with such a radicalpreacher? I feel so hopeless about this point. I mean, how would wefeel if McCain was taking his family most Sundays to Jerry Falwell'sdiscourses?

6. Obama's appeal to the young and the "latte liberals" has been hisfresh-faced sincerity and honesty. To me, I know, that has been hisprimary appeal. Now, how do I reconcile this with what his detractorswill call: the hypocrisy of calling, say, Ferraro as divisive? I mean,folks, what is more divisive than the things the Pastor said about"white folks", even clearly lambasting Europeans.

7. Of all the incendiary things one can say about race and society andcountry where is an Obama supporter or surrogate who now has the moralhigh ground to accuse the opponent's surrogates for being divisive.What is disheartening here is that Obama has forever ceded that highground to Clinton/McCain.

I may be wrong - do persuade me that I am. It is very hard for me tovote for Hillary but now I am thinking about the general election andfinding it really hard to figure out how Obama can keep hisconstituencies, his image of being a uniter. How can he? I am seeingthose Republican ads running day and night showing a montage of all thedifferent ways this Pastor has denounced America and Europeans andIsrael, punctuated by Obama in his own words "I don't think actuallythat my church is particularly controversial". I mean, Judgment,Moderation, Sincerity - can they be Obama's defining pillars anymore?This is so disheartening. Where do we go from here?

The MSM has decided that Obama is the saviour of the left and they're not going to willingly give up that position.The same thing happened in Australia during the last elections, and they successfully downplayed the murky pasts of the leftist candidates.It's now election by media, more than ever.

Sadly, this all reminds me of 92. I was stationed in Arkansas then, and we all there KNEW about Bill's unseemly out of control womanizing. He was the state joke. Even so, it didn't matter to the electorate. They voted for him anyway. People who love Obama will not be swayed. The rest of the electorate won't pay attention.

Phil,I agree with the 1992 feeling but this is different. We actually have candidates (2) that can talk and defend themselves. Bush (both of them) do not defend themselves well. We have not had a bulldog (or should I say pitbull) at the head of the Republican party since Reagan. If they let Sarah speak...we will win.